Browse Categories

Recipe: Jeremy Lee’s Sardines on Toast with a Fried Egg

Can’t wait to try the  new look restaurant at Quo Vadis? Celebrate the reopening with this simple yet classic dish.

Good news for fans of the restaurant at Quo Vadis –  the Great Dame of Dean Street will reopen this month with a swanky new look, and a more spacious public dining room. And the menu has been updated for the re-launch with some celebratory  new dishes. Can’t wait to tuck in? Whet your appetite with this simple classic taken from chef proprietor Jeremy Lee’s critically acclaimed  new book Cooking: Simply And Well, For One or Many (4th Estate, £30). Jeremy says: “Worth considering too for this charming dish are mackerel  and herring, cooked similarly.”

Ingredients

3 spring onions, trimmed | 1 slice of bread  | butter | 1 teaspoon olive oil | 3 fresh sardines, butterflied, i.e. Split and flattened | 1 organic egg

SERVES 1

Method

  1. Heat a griddle or frying pan over a high heat. Lay the spring onions on the hot pan to blister, turning after 3–4 minutes to blister the other side.
  2. Toast the bread and chop the spring onions finely.
  3. Butter the toast and spread with the chopped spring onion.
  4. Lightly oil and season the skin side of the sardines, then lay them in the onion pan, skin side down, and cook undisturbed for 3 to 4 minutes, until the flesh turns pale, then flip and cook for no more than 1 minute on the other side.
  5. Heat a small frying pan and gently fry the egg.
  6. Carefully lift the sardines and turn them, set them skin side up on the onion, then place the egg on the sardines – et voilà.

Recipe_Sardines

The restaurant reopens on 14 February. 26-29 Dean Street, W1D (020 7437 9585; quovadissoho.co.uk/restaurant/)